


Agent Deadbug

by lordofbutt



Category: Invader Zim, King of the Hill
Genre: Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Frenemies, Gen, IZ characters/KOTH kids in high school, Post-Enter the Florpus, Recreational Drug Use, ZADF-ish, dale is god, nice!gaz, post-KOTH series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-20 21:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordofbutt/pseuds/lordofbutt
Summary: Dale Gribble has always known that, somehow, by some unseen machinations, his son Joseph was actually an alien. His friends in the alley always roll their eyes and pretend they don't hear him when he talks about it, but he knows they're wrong.Dib Membrane, much to the chagrin of his sister and father (and everyone else around him), has more or less devoted his life to the study of the paranormal (and, particularly, the defeat of his alien classmate, Zim).When the two find out about each other, things start to get hairy on both ends.(Mature for language and casual drug use.)





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> (This fic is being written on Wattpad first, because I like their writing UI, but it'll also be posted on fanfiction.net and AO3. Feel free to follow it on whichever you prefer.)
> 
> So, yeah, this is a pretty weird idea for a fic, coming from someone who hasn't written non-serious fanfiction in probably about a decade, but it's just absolutely refusing to leave my head.
> 
> As a result of this being an absolutely strange crossover, I've gotta do some table-setting; IZ and KotH have very, very different relationships with continuity, and making the two gel organically is going to be a lot harder than just saying "this is where we're at in both shows' timelines" and rolling from there. Specifically, it's always a toss-up whether any given episode of IZ or issue of the comic matters going forwards at all (and there's some that basically can't because they end pretty definitively), whereas KotH is almost slavish with its devotion to strict continuity; if an IZ character dies on screen, they might show up alive and well the next episode, whereas the few KotH characters who die (Buckley, Cotton) stay very dead going forwards, for example.
> 
> So here's where we're at.
> 
> On the Zim end, we're five years past Enter the Florpus, and the new status quo that movie ends with is more-or-less intact. Dib is on better terms with his family due to the revelations in that movie (go watch it for specifics, but essentially, he knows Gaz cares about his well-being and that his dad is actually pretty proud of him). Zim knows his "mission" was a prank, as in Florpus, and to the best of his knowledge the Tallest and the Irken Armada are dead (and, if they somehow survived the Florpus hole, he really doesn't want to deal with them). Universe details from the comics may come in, but their plots did not happen, for the purposes of this fic.
> 
> On the KotH end, assume we're post-series as a whole, by a few years. Cotton is dead, Bobby and Hank are slowly coming to terms with each other (partly inspired by Bobby's newfound love of grilling), Dale is as crazy as ever, Bill's still depressed, Boomhauer's still Boomhauer. Joseph and Bobby are high school seniors.
> 
> There's other details I'm deliberately leaving out here, but they'll become apparent over the course of the story.

Dale sighed at his computer as Nancy came down the stairs. She briefly regarded his form; he had always been a skinny man, and his baggy clothes had hid it, but he was starting to look outright emaciated.

"Hey, sug, you doing okay?" she asked him. "You haven't eaten in a couple days." Dale looked up at her, his trademark sunglasses and hat still adorning his head, even though he was not only inside but in his basement. It was a wonder that he could even see.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I have been down here for a while," he said. He looked at his turtles; had he neglected feeding them? It didn't matter, though. Dale had something big going on. He'd found this website, the Swollen Eyeball Network, while digging through TOR looking for other conspiracy nuts, and it was like he had found his new crazy deep-web home. "Want me to go pick up Whataburger?" Nancy blinked. Did he seriously not realize...?

"No, sug, I cooked dinner tonight. And last night. Seriously, sug, you should eat. You're not looking good," she said. Under the sunglasses, he rolled his eyes a little. "C'mon up, you can get to this after you eat." Sometimes, she was more like a parent or a caretaker to him than a wife; she didn't really like this, but it just came with the territory of being married to Dale Gribble.

"Okay," he said, defeatedly, as he got up and shambled up the stairs.

Meanwhile, on the computer screen, his post about Joseph that he'd been watching for a few hours beeped and lit up with several new replies, from an Agent Mothman. Nearly two hundred miles away from Arlen, somewhere around Houston, Dib Membrane sat at his own computer, practically beaming.

He dashed out of his room and into the living room. Gaz had commandeered the TV to play some video game, in which a vaguely scary-looking knight was rolling around and taking occasional swipes at a giant, freaky-looking monster that was half spider and half naked woman. He regarded this for a second; he recognized this game, and she _really_ didn't like to be bothered while she was playing it, even by her usual standards. He thought for a second about his options, between yelling for her attention like he typically did or just walking away; the latter was unlike him, but the former would probably light off a shitstorm like usual.

He took a third option and cleared his throat. Gaz looked up at him for a literal second, and then looked back at the TV, subtly rolling her eyes.

"Is this important, Dib, or is it stupid?" she asked, her attention to the game unwavering. Dib was a little deflated by this.

"...somewhere in the middle?" he offered, sheepishly.

"Can it _wait?_" she asked. "I'm in the middle of something," she added, stating the obvious.

"Sure," he said.

"Cool. Lemme just kill Quelaag and you'll have my attention," she said. Dib didn't know what the hell a Quelaag was, but he figured from context that it was _probably_ the spider-monster her knight was fighting. He sat down on the couch, and she moved slightly to give him room; he had become a pretty skinny teenager, but his sister was particularly big on personal space, and there was a fairly large gap in the couch between them.

He watched as the same vague loop of rolling and attacking played itself out, over and over, in various parts of the arena, and boggled at how Gaz never got bored of this. He was a bit of a gamer himself, of course (as it's hard to spend time around someone that invested in it and not pick up a little by osmosis), but he leaned more towards strategy games on his computer and that sort of thing; this was not only unfamiliar to him, but somewhat unappealing.

"Cool-looking game," he lied.

"Yeah," his sister said, keeping her attention focused. "Fun game. Hard as _fuck,_ but fun," she continued. As if Dib needed _another_ reason to not play this. It was like a game made specifically for his sister, and specifically not for him. To be fair, he thought, she'd probably get pretty bored with the space empire management game he'd been playing lately, though she'd probably get a laugh out of Dib's typical empire build being Absolute Xenophobe, all things considered.

That brought Dib back to why he'd come down here in the first place, and he looked up at the TV. "Chaos Witch Quelaag" only had a sliver of health left on her life bar, which Gaz took out handily, causing the spider-monster to dissolve into white sparks and a message reading "VICTORY ACHIEVED" to appear on the screen. She did a little fist pump, then calmed down, set the controller down and looked over at him.

"Thanks for keeping quiet for a minute, I've been working on that boss for _hours._ Now what's up?" For someone the way _she_ was, Gaz could be pretty nice to Dib when he approached her on her terms. Dib gathered his thoughts for a second.

"Well, I've been back on the Swollen Eyeball site every now and then, and..." he began. She stifled a laugh, and he looked at her quizzically. "What's up?"

"You _still_ talk to those dorks?" she asked, visibly holding back laughter. She was a little more accepting of his hobby than she used to be, but the SEN still seemed fundamentally ridiculous to her; Dib seemed to more-or-less have his head on straight, but the rest of them seemed like a bunch of paranoid idiots.

"I mean, yeah," he defended. "Not really a lot of other good places to talk about that kind of thing online. They're paranoid, but at least they're serious," he went on. Gaz knew how important that was to Dib, and suddenly it kind of made sense; of course he wouldn't go somewhere that people would potentially mock him.

But they _had_ mocked him, a lot, she realized. Mostly because of... Zim.

The name popping into her head almost surprised her. She hadn't really thought about him in about four or five years now, ever since the whole thing with the Florpus Hole had happened, but it was sort of hard to pretend he hadn't been a big influence on _both_ of their lives. Dib for the obvious reasons, and Gaz, because she had to constantly bail her brother out of stupid bullshit Zim dragged him into. She thought about that one family night a few years ago, when she'd had to _leave the planet_ just for the sake of getting Dib to Bloaty's, and shuddered a little involuntarily.

"You okay?" Dib asked.

"Yeah. I just thought of... y'know, the little green asshole, for a second." Dib cringed.

"Oh god, _Zim?_" he asked.

"Yeah. The little green asshole. This isn't about him, is it?" she asked. If it was, she was done, immediately, and Dib knew that.

"Er... not directly, no? Aliens, yes, him, not so much," he said. "There's a guy on there, calls himself Agent Deadbug, who's saying he thinks his son is half-alien. Typical UFO story, he went out of town, wife got pregnant, kid looks weird, he thinks she got abducted and impregnated," he explained.

"And you're thinking Irkens might be involved somehow," she said, rolling her eyes. She wasn't _strictly _wrong, but he felt the need to defend himself anyways.

"Actually, no," he half-lied. "If anything, this seems like a chance to see if there's anything... less obnoxious than Zim out there, you know? Maybe some actual cool aliens." Gaz raised an eyebrow.

"So, this is seriously not about him? At all?" she asked.

"I mean, you never know_. _Zim's kind of got a way of inserting himself into situations where he's not wanted," he said. Gaz chuckled.

"God, like that first family night we had after the Florpus thing? Why the _hell_ would he even want to go to Bloaty's, anyways?" she asked.

"I mean, why do you?" Dib asked. It was a genuine question, in his mind- even he knew there were probably a hundred better pizza places in the greater Houston area, and distance wasn't really any object, given Bloaty's was practically an hour away as it stands.

"Because to me the food's just mediocre, not _literal poison,_" Gaz explained semi-sarcastically. "Seriously, I can't even unpack that, do you have any idea what was going on there?"

Dib had been kind of stumped too. Zim hadn't really had any plan there, at least not that Dib could figure. As he had explained it when Dib dragged him off for a quick one-on-one chat, he just wanted to get out of the house and interact with someone other than GIR, Minimoose or the computer, and the Membranes were really the only other living things on the planet that Zim could say he was on even okay terms with. It seemed like a weak explanation- Zim wasn't typically the type to need companionship, and to describe the terms they were on as "okay" just seemed odd, all things considered- but, for lack of anything better, Dib had to take it.

"Maybe he was just bored," Dib said. Gaz shrugged.

"Yeah, I dunno. Never really understood him, honestly. So, you need my help or something?" she asked, looking him in the eyes.

"Eh." Dib shrugged. "I don't really _need_ it, I'm just gonna try and set up a meeting with this Deadbug guy since I'm the main alien obsessive on the site. Mostly just wanted to let you know in case this guy's not on the level and something happens."

"Where's he at?" she asked.

"He lives in Arlen, apparently," he said. She widened her eyes a little; Arlen was three hours away. "Don't worry, sis, we're gonna meet halfway somewhere probably in College Station. If he's actually got something, we'll figure something out, but for now I'm not gonna do a lot of driving or be gone for very long." Dib wasn't a very good driver, and had a _hell_ of a road-rage problem, especially when the other car reminded him of Zim's stupid abomination of a "car" in any way, so him driving for an hour and a half still wasn't great, but it was better.

"Hey, I've never actually been there, and I hear they've got a good pizza place by the A&M campus. You sure you don't want me to tag along?" Gaz asked. She was a better driver, at any rate, even if Dib had gotten his license a year earlier than her.

"I mean, if you want to," he said, his tone slightly questioning. "You might be kinda bored, though." She held up her Game Slave in response to this. "Yeah, fair enough. I'll let you know when we know for sure," he said. "What's the pizza place called? I might be able to talk him into meeting there." She beamed.

Back in Arlen, in the alley outside the Hill house, the same four men as always held their same Alamo beers as always and said "yup" in turn, as was their custom for breaking awkward silences. Dale had a big, stupid grin on his face, and Hank looked at him, a little confused.

"What's got you so perked up, Dale?" Hank asked him.

"You know how I've been saying Joseph's an alien forever?" Dale asked. Hank stifled an "oh, _god_" before it could involuntarily come out; Dale may not have known it, and God willing, he'd never find out, but Hank knew for a fact that, rather than being part-alien, Joseph was simply part John Redcorn. The question put him in an awkward position, to say the least.

"Uh... yeah, you've been saying that for years. Isn't he in high school now?" Hank asked, trying to change the subject.

"Yeah, he is, he's on the football team," Dale added. "But anyways, I found this website on the deep web full of other people like me, and there's someone who says he wants to check Joseph out and see for sure if he's an alien. Some guy named Agent Mothman."

Boomhauer raised an eyebrow as he moved his beer away from his mouth. 

"Be careful with all that dang ol' agent stuff, like you might dang ol' take Joseph and then dang ol' 'FBI, FREEZE' and then they're talking about all that life sentence and terrorism stuff, man, you do some dang ol' pretty crazy stuff online," Boomhauer muttered in his usual barely-comprehensible register. As he was a Texas Ranger, Boomhauer had some experience with branches of law enforcement that referred to their people as "agents," and to his understanding they didn't tend to be anything like Dale.

"Oh, it's just a codename to keep us anonymous. I'm Agent Deadbug on there," Dale said.

Hank looked across the street, at a large van that read "DALE'S DEAD BUG" and had a giant dead bug on the top. He looked at Dale, absolutely stunned.

"It's to keep you anonymous, and you picked 'Deadbug' as your name?" Hank asked.

"I mean, how else are they going to know who I am if I meet them in real life?" Dale asked. Hank couldn't really argue with that, though he internally questioned the wisdom of actively removing your anonymity on a website that seemingly prioritized it. He briefly wondered if this might be the last time he saw Dale alive, and then kicked the thought back to his deep-brain. "Anyways, this Agent Mothman guy lives down in Houston, so Joseph and I are gonna go down to College Station on Saturday and meet him halfway at this pizza place near A&M. He says he's bringing his sister. I'm not sure if that's code for something," Dale explained.

"Oh, oh, let me come along!" Bill chimed in, having been quiet so far. "I love College Station and I love pizza, so this should be pretty fun." Dale raised an eyebrow at Bill.

"Yeah, sure, there's room in the van," Dale said, slightly dismissively. Bill cheered and ran to hug him, making him recoil a bit.

Back in Houston, over at Zim's house, the Irken, his robot, and his floating pink moose were curled up on the couch. On the television, Bryan Cranston in a pork-pie hat was telling some random tough to stay out of his territory, while TV on the Radio played. He didn't really want to overtly admit this to the Dib-stink or the human purple (or, Irk, especially not their _father_), but the plan with the Florpus Hole had been more or less his last hail-Mary; there wasn't any point left in trying to conquer the Earth, given that the Tallest had not only spelled out the reality of his mission but were probably also _dead,_ and that left Zim _bored._ Netflix was only doing so much to stave it off.

Minimoose squeaked.

"No, I'm not getting one of those hats for my disguise," Zim said. He had to face it: just staying cooped up in his base absolutely sucked. It's not as if there was a whole lot else to do, though; trying to take over would be absolutely pointless, since this was a planet with rapidly dwindling resources, populated with idiots, that the now-likely-dead Tallest had not even known _existed_ when they shot him off into space. He'd tried to... _befriend_ the Dib-stink not too long after his final attempt, and that didn't exactly go fantastically, given they went to the terrible pizza place with the creepy monster costumes. So, all there was to do was just stay there until something came up. Things had a way of coming up in Zim's life... except they hadn't, at all, not for nearly four years now.

"Computer, how long has it been since I've left the house for anything other than food or keeping up appearances at skool?" He sometimes forgot the Computer was sapient and could answer him verbally. The Computer probably didn't like that.

"Four years." It really sank in when the Computer said it. Unfortunately, the literal only thing coming to mind was to go bother the Dib-stink, and he wasn't even entirely sure if the Dib-stink still lived where he used to. Didn't humans move out around sixteen or seventeen, typically? And that's not accounting for his father. Zim shuddered involuntarily. He didn't like thinking about the... giant, competent Dib-stink with the robot arms, for lack of a better way of describing him. It was like everything he hated about that child, but with a smaller head and more of it occupied by brain.

But he couldn't think of anything else to do that wouldn't potentially land him in hot water. Going somewhere else long-term would attract too much attention; he'd gotten lucky that, somehow, he'd landed in a city so polluted that he could get away with having _green skin_ and just call it a skin condition, but that wasn't everywhere on Earth and it tended to not be the nicer places. Zim didn't like Houston, but he didn't like the sound of Beijing or New Delhi, either.

Though at least in New Delhi, they'd have less meat. Zim considered that for a second and then decided that no, going to bother Dib was likely a better idea.

Before anyone knew it, it was Saturday. In Arlen, Dale Gribble, his son, and Bill Dauterive packed into the Dale's Dead-Bug van for a road trip. On the other end, Dib and Gaz Membrane loaded themselves into the former's Honda Civic, not realizing they had an unwanted guest curled up in the trunk.


	2. Chapter II

The trunk was cramped, but gave Zim enough room to breathe, at least. He was many things, but claustrophobic was not one of them, and he thanked God for that.

He heard a couple of things being thrown into the car. Presumably the Dib-stink's bags for wherever he was going. There was a second person there, though- a higher-pitched voice. A complication. He would figure this out later. He briefly wondered why he didn't just get out his "car" and tail the Dib-stink, but dismissed that as beneath the mighty Zim.

He'd hated looking at his Voot Cruiser ever since he decided to weld wheels onto it, anyhow. It fooled the police and the skool security into thinking it was a car, somehow, but it was just _ugly._ He got looks from people whenever he took it to skool.

Up in the front seat, he heard doors opening on both sides and two people getting in. There was definitely a second person here. It was clearly a human female, and from his understanding of the Dib-stink, there was a grand total of one human female he was close to.

The color drained from Zim's face at the realization and his thoughts became filled with Irken swearing that he tried desperately not to let out. He could work with this, he thought. The human purple had calmed down a decent bit in recent years, and certainly wasn't quite the terrifying specter of destruction she had previously been.

It would have been funny to Zim if it didn't also somewhat annoy him. The Dib-stink was incompetent, and their back-and-forth had been on ice lately regardless, but his family was decidedly _not_ so. Whenever a plan of his had attracted the human purple's attention, historically, she would just ignore any attempts at intimidation and beat him senseless. With a ham, at one point. That hadn't been particularly fun. The Dib-stink's father, though... there were few people Zim could consider himself outright terrified of, and the larger Dib-stink with the smaller head and the robot arms was one of them. For one, he just looked outright freaky, and for two, you don't forget a man who singlehandedly tears through thousands of robots to protect his idiot giant-headed son.

Zim could hear music coming from the front seat, and arguing. He wished, briefly, that he could be a fly on the wall for that; he couldn't make out anything being said from inside the trunk. Eventually, the arguing died down and the music changed to something else, and then the car started moving. He held up his wrist.

"GIR, can you read me?" Nothing. "Minimoose?" Nothing. His wrist communicator showed no connection whatsoever. He cursed the trunk.

From the humans' perspective, they heard what sounded like squeaking in the trunk. 

"Hey, sis, you hear that?" Dib asked, gesturing towards the trunk with his head. Gaz didn't look up from her Game Slave.

"Yup," she said. "Maybe your suspension's boned."

"Christ, I hope not," Dib said. "I know Dad left us a lot of money when he passed, plus all the donations and whatnot, but I really don't wanna burn through it working on this shitty car, you know?" He didn't like bringing it up, but it always came up when finances did. The Professor had passed away in an industrial accident about two years after they last had to deal with Zim. They didn't know the details, and they suspected they didn't want to; what little they did know suggested it had not been a pleasant way to die. Something about complete atomization and failed reconstruction while working on a teleporter.

It left them in a precarious situation, for a while. The state of Texas tried to step in, send them to foster homes, but, to be frank, neither of them wanted that. Maybe a few years prior when they'd been on worse terms, but by the time it had happened, they didn't really want to be far from each other, and they were fairly confident they could take care of themselves; after all, that had more or less been the status quo for years. 

They lawyered up, and by the time everything from the estate of Professor Robert Membrane (a stage name, but one he'd legally had it changed to) had been worked out, it was fairly simple; by the time things reached any kind of movement after all their attorney's stalling, Dib had turned sixteen, and he simply petitioned to become an emancipated minor. As his father had left the two of them _quite a bit_ of money, it went through without a hitch; this left Gaz, but with Dib being an emancipated minor, it was fairly simple to place her legally in his care.

On paper, that is. In practice, things were the same as always, and if anything it was sometimes the other way around.

"Speaking of burning through money, I gotta stop for gas," Dib said, looking at the fuel gauge as it slowly reached E. "I'll look at the trunk when I hop out."

Back in the trunk, Zim was uncharacteristically frightened. The car was stopping. Why was the car stopping? Were Dib and the human purple already at their destination? Was it that horrible pizza place with the horrible costumes?

Zim heard a little hatch open on the side, and then something pumping into the car. Was it poison!? Was Zim about to meet his fate, gassed by the Dib-stink, in a trap he walked into without even realizing it?

And then the trunk opened.

From Zim's perspective, what he saw was... unfamiliar. It looked _vaguely_ like the Dib-stink- the hair was a dead giveaway- but he seemed to have gotten nearly an entire foot taller (making his head look less big proportionate to the rest of his body), he had a decent amount of neatly-trimmed hair adorning his face, he was wearing entirely different clothing, and he'd packed on some muscle in the time. To be frank, Dib looked _good._

From Dib's perspective, what he saw was a four-foot-nine green man with a horrible toupee and a pink dress, curled up in his trunk, looking up at him with the same God-awful Halloween contacts as ever. He balled his fist. Zim looked up.

"...Dib?" Zim asked, the mild confusion palpable in his voice. Dib gestured up to his cowlick and nodded.

"Why the _fuck_ are you in my trunk?" Dib asked. Zim thought for a second.

"I got bored," he stated, matter-of-factly.

"So you're hiding in my fucking trunk!?" Dib wasn't sure if he was stunned, angry, or both. He settled on both.

"I'll try to explain if you let me, Dib-human." Dib blinked. It was rare for Zim to use the suffix "-human" for him, as opposed to "-monkey" or "-stink" or something along those lines. It usually meant he wasn't coming on aggressive terms, and that typically meant he wasn't in the mood for bullshit. Dib looked over to the car. Gaz was looking back at him, raising an eyebrow questioningly. He looked back to Zim in the trunk.

"Alright, but not in my trunk. Come up to the back seat. We packed pretty light, so there's room with our bags," Dib explained as he unlocked the back doors. Zim walked up, opened the back passenger door, and hopped up onto the seat, making Gaz's jaw drop. Dib followed, resuming his place at the driver's side.

"How... buh... wha..." Gaz sputtered.

"He was in the trunk," Dib explained. "He said he's gonna explain what's going on, and if his explanation sucks I'm going to throw him out onto the freeway." Zim raised an eyebrow, then internally dismissed it as a joke, despite it very clearly not being a joke.

He started his explanation. Of how the Tallest had not only abandoned him, but were also probably dead, and how he'd last seen them burning alive in some kind of horrible alternate dimension. Of how this not only applied to them, but to the entire Irken Armada, and resultingly most of the Irken race, leaving him as the only Irken he knew was still alive at all (though he held out a bit of hope for a few who he'd last seen away from the Armada). Of how this left him with, more or less, no reason to bother continuing his conquest of Earth whatsoever. And most importantly, how this left him _absolutely bored out of his skull._ All he knew was conflict, and that had been more or less taken away from him by force, so he was aimless.

"So you decided to prank my bro by hiding in the trunk?" Gaz asked, trying to push down a smile. "That's... actually kinda great."

"I... I'm not actually sure _where _I was going with the whole trunk idea, honestly," Zim said. "I mostly just wanted to bother the Dib-human, I saw this car outside your house, and it seemed somehow obvious."

"It was a horrible plan, Zim," Dib said, matter-of-factly. "Do you wanna know why?" Zim looked at him, cocking his head quizzically.

"Why?" the alien asked.

"Because you didn't bother to try and figure out where we were going before you broke into my goddamned trunk and parked your stupid green ass there. If you had, you would have realized we were meeting up with one of my Swollen Eyeball buddies_,_ and specifically one who's another alien nut who thinks his kid's part alien. Y'know, the absolute last person on Earth, even moreso than me, who you would ever want knowing about you," Dib explained, getting louder and angrier with every word. It almost sounded like he was a bit worried about the alien.

Zim just smiled. Then chuckled. Then that chuckle broke into full-on giggling.

"What? How could this possibly be funny to you?" Dib asked. He really did come off like an angry dad, Gaz thought. A dad to an alien son who was probably older than him; stranger things have happened, she laughed to herself.

"You're acting like this is _hard,_ Dib-human," the alien said, gesturing to his hairpiece and contacts. They were God-awful, but for some reason, they'd worked for years without anyone ever being the wiser. "I'll just put a little more effort into the whole foreign-guy thing, and he probably won't notice anything's up," Zim went on.

"You're fucking _green,_" Dib said, incredulous. "You are, quite literally, the archetypal Little Green Man of UFO lore, but wearing a shitty Trump toupee and Halloween-store contacts. How in God's name do you think this guy's going to react to seeing that if he's an alien nut?" Zim shrugged.

"Skin condition," he said, smiling. "After all, we are from Houston, right? Including me, your neighbor and fellow ufologist, Chad Malma. My skin's just been dyed green from pollution. You know how much _pollution_ there is in Houston," he explained. Dib smacked his face with his palm.

"Did you make that up on the fly?" he asked.

"No," Zim stated, matter-of-factly. "Chad Malma's the human name I use whenever I need to go deep-cover. Pretending to be a ufologist is easy when you're a typical cause of UFO incidents. From there, it all seems kind of simple."

"You know, your diction's kind of gotten better since we last saw you," Dib remarked.

"Yeah, mainlining four straight years of garbage television can do that. I'm not a hundred percent sure if I can even speak decent Irken anymore," he said, a little melancholy audible in his voice. "A lot of why I'm still on board with this is because, if the guy you're talking about is actually _right,_ his son will be the first non-Earth creature other than GIR or Minimoose I've seen in something like four and a half years. And if he's wrong, I get to laugh at him," Zim explained. "It actually sounds like fun."

"Wait," Dib said. "How would _you_ know if he's right or wrong? You screwed up with Tak and thought she was a human, remember?"

"Tak had an actual good disguise," the alien said darkly. "Disguise tech can be made to fool it, like with hers, but ordinarily our PAK works it out for us. I just have to look him in the eyes for a few seconds and I'll get a facial recognition reading. If he gets a cut and I dab some of the blood on one of my PAK waldos, I can even get a full genetic print when I retract it."

"Would have helped with her, huh?" Dib asked, half-mockingly. Zim gave him a glare that told him not to pursue this any further. There was clearly some bad blood there. "Anyways. We'll be getting there in a minute. He seems a little paranoid, so I'm gonna explain you as a UFO expert I brought along. Hope you didn't change your story any, _Chad,_ because I'm sticking to what you told me," he explained. He looked out the window.

Parked in front of the pizzeria was a very, very large van with very, very large print on it reading "DALE'S DEAD BUG." On top of the van was an absolutely massive model of a dead bug.

Dib palmed his face. So much for paranoid. Or at least, _intelligently_ paranoid.

"I probably overthought this," Dib grumbled.

"Me too," Zim grumbled in return. "I'm almost wondering if I even need to be Chad Malma for this or if I can just play it like at skool." That got Dib to raise an eyebrow.

"You're still in skool? I never see you," Dib said.

"Yeah, I go to keep up appearances. I actually went out of my way to try and pick classes that don't put us together because, for a minute, I thought I was gonna try and take over the world for my own sake. You know, fuck the Tallest, I'm taking over, that kind of thing." That made Gaz perk her head up from the Game Slave.

"Why _didn't_ you?" she asked. 

"Meh. I'm not really a good self-motivator," Zim said. "Plus, I've kind of gotten the feeling GIR really likes things the way they are. I'd probably end up doing something that fucks up tacos or his TV shows or those weird parties he gets invited to, and then he'd be sad, and I honestly kind of hate it when he gets sad."

"That's... uncharacteristically sweet of you," she said.

"Mostly because he shits on the carpet when he's sad. I don't even know how he does that," Zim added quickly.

"That's more what I expected," she corrected herself. "Speaking of weird parties, though..." she said as she set her Game Slave aside and reached into the small black bag she carried it around in. From that bag, she produced a small red herb grinder, a packet of rolling papers, and a lighter, then looked at Dib and Zim. "Y'all in? This'll definitely make sitting through this nonsense easier."

Dib answering was practically a formality. He wasn't as big of a pothead as his sister (who credited it heavily with making her a more pleasant person), but he still liked a little bit of it every now and then, especially when they were together. Zim, however, was more of an unknown quantity; Gaz wasn't even sure if Irkens could get high.

"I'm not really sure what I'm looking at here," Zim said, sheepishly but honestly.

"Weed," Gaz answered. "Marijuana. The devil's lettuce. Cannabis." It was the last one that hit a pang of recognition with Zim; he'd seen humans smoking something under the stairwell at school, and his PAK recognized the composition of the smoke as cannabis. The other names, he'd only really heard in GIR's movies, and he never paid much attention to those, as he tended to have horrible misunderstandings whenever he did.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Yeah, fuck it, I'm in," he said. "Curious what you humans get out of this." Dib laughed uproariously.

"God, if I'd known back in elementary skool that we'd end up _smoking you out_ for the first time, I don't even know what the hell," he said, attempting to compose himself. Gaz took out a rolling paper, tore off a little piece of the packaging to act as a crutch, filled it with ground-up buds from the grinder, and started rolling it to the best of her ability; to say that it came out odd-looking would be an understatement. Zim raised an eyebrow.

"Want Zim to try?" he asked.

"It's your first time ever smoking. I'm pretty sure you don't know how to roll a joint," Gaz retorted.

"I think I got the gist from watching your hands. Also, I have six hands, four of which are robotic," he explained.

"Fair enough," Gaz shrugged, and handed the scraggly joint back to Zim, who unrolled it and proceeded to redo it with almost machine-like precision before handing it back.

"Easy," he said. Then he noticed something. "Wait a sec, hand it back?" he asked, and she obliged; he proceeded to tie a little knot into the end of it in the shape of the Irken Armada's insignia, and then handed it back. She regarded this briefly.

"Showoff," she laughed, before bringing the other end to her lips and lighting it. She briefly wondered if Zim had meant any kind of symbolism by the addition- burning off his ties to his old masters, or something like that. She dismissed it, though- he wasn't typically that thoughtful.

Meanwhile, Dale, Bill, and Joseph sat on the patio, at a table with a black umbrella over it, looking over their menus. This was typical for Dale and Joseph, though not so much for Bill; ever since the vast majority of bars and restaurants had banned smoking indoors, Dale had made a habit of opting for outdoor seating whenever possible. A Manitoba Red sat between his lips, and he puffed on it slightly every few seconds, exhaling a cloud of thick white smoke from his nose after.

"Hey, Dad? Why don't you get one of those vape things like all the cool kids at school have?" Joseph asked. He had gotten marginally better over the years, but he still wasn't exactly the most articulate person on Earth, much to his real father's chagrin. "Then, we'd be able to eat inside, like normal people." Dale looked over at his son.

"Joseph, you know the government made those things to poison us and replace us with lizard people. We've talked about this," he said, condescension in his voice. He was at least partially right; they had, in fact, talked about this before. It was simply so ridiculous that Joseph had largely pushed it out of his mind. Bill poked at the pizzas in front of them; they'd gotten an extra-large pepperoni pizza and a large cheese, not really knowing what their guests preferred (or if they even had a preference).

Before they knew it, a pale-skinned, red-eyed teenager with an odd spike in his hair wandered up to the side of the table and looked Dale in the eyes (at least, to the best of his ability, given Dale's mirrored sunglasses).

"Agent Deadbug, I'm guessing?" the teen asked, gesturing up to the "DALE'S DEAD BUG" hat with his eyes. Dale furrowed his brows and looked around, shiftily.

"Who's asking?" The teen palmed his face.

"It's Agent Mothman. Y'know, from the Swollen Eyeball site?" Dale calmed down and gestured to the two extra seats. The teen regarded them briefly. "Mind if I pull up an extra chair? Turns out a buddy of mine, a ufologist named Chad Malma, wanted in on this," the teen explained. Dale perked up.

"Ooh, a _ufologist,_ huh? Yeah, pull up as many extra chairs as you need!" Dale exclaimed.

"If he's fat like me, you might need two," Bill advised, shameless as usual. Dale gave him a mildly dirty look as their guest eased into the chair closest to the railing and made a come-here gesture to his car. Before long, another teenager, a few inches shorter than him but with short purple hair and even redder eyes, arrived, along with a very short, green-skinned man in a pink dress.

Dale blinked. The initial teen with the hair-spike extended his hand.

"Dib Membrane," he introduced himself. He nodded over to the other teen, who had already started playing a handheld video game. "That's my sister Gaz. The little guy is Chad, the ufologist I mentioned earlier." Dale raised an eyebrow, regarding Chad, who appeared to his eyes to be an alien in a very poor human disguise. He dismissed it, though, and shook Dib's hand.

"Dale Gribble, CEO of Dale's Dead Bug," Dale introduced himself. Dib tried not to bust out laughing. It was one of the weaker handshakes he'd ever gotten from someone, at any rate.

"Alright, so... I'm guessing that's your son there?" Dib asked, looking at Joseph. It seemed obvious, given the only other person in their party appeared to not be much younger than Dale, if at all.

"Yup. That would be my _half-alien_ son Joseph, who I need you to check out for me," Dale explained, almost sounding triumphant. "I want solid proof that he's half-alien." Dib shrunk back a bit. Joseph certainly didn't look like an alien. If anything, he just looked like he was of Native descent. Dib inhaled.

"So, quick question. Is anyone in your family, that you know of, Native?" Dib asked. Bill's eyes widened and he started making terrified mouth-zipping gestures at Dib from behind Dale. Dale seemed confused by the question.

"...like, native to the United States?" Dale asked. Dib regarded the other older man, whose antics were getting even more over-the-top by the minute; whatever he was poking, this man was doing everything in his power to try and tell him to pull back. He decided to take the advice.

"Uh, no, they're a type of alien," he said, sheepishly. "Hey, can I have a private word with my associates for a second?"

"Yeah, sure, take your time!" Dale exclaimed. He just seemed happy to be humored, and Dib, Gaz, and "Chad" wandered off for a moment.

"So I think I know what's going on here," Dib said.

"Yeah, duh. He went out of town and his wife got some Native dick. This kid's not a fucking alien," Gaz said.

"We don't really know that for sure unless I run some quick tests on him," Zim said. "After all, isn't that most of why you brought me, the mighty Zim? So you could leverage my superior Irken technology?" Dib raised an eyebrow. Apparently that joint had brought back a little of the old Zim.

"No, I'm gonna be honest, I mostly let you come along because you looked depressed as shit. I could've probably handled this solo, especially the way it's working out," Dib explained. "It's just gonna be tough explaining it to him. I really don't wanna be the one to break this news. Clearly he doesn't know, or the fat bald guy they're with wouldn't have been waving his arms at me like one of those car-dealership things when I mentioned Native people."  
  
Zim smiled evilly.

"I don't like that smile, Zim," Dib said, honestly. It looked less like a smile of happiness, and more like a hunter who'd just ensnared prey.

"I've got a solution to your problem," Zim said. "We _make_ him half-alien." 

"Wait, what?" Dib asked. With that, Zim extended his PAK legs and charged back to the table.

"You, hat-man! Come with Chad Malma! Bring your human-smeet!" Zim shouted as he grabbed a whimpering Dale by the collar, hoisted him up, and charged off into the distance. Joseph and Bill looked at each other, shrugged, and continued eating pizza. Gaz looked at Dib.

"Well, _this_ is bad," she said. Dib raised an eyebrow and looked back at her.

"Yeah, no shit?" he asked, angrily. Then it hit him, and he started laughing.

"What's up?" his sister asked, not really sure what was so funny about this. He looked up at her.

"It's just like old times, all over again," he said.


	3. Chapter III

Dale screamed as the small green man ran down the interstate at roughly seventy-five miles per hour, carrying him by the back of his shirt with a strange spider-like waldo. He was seemingly using the other three as crude, yet extremely fast stilts. He briefly considered his pocket sand, but disregarded this thought, as it would just blow back in his face; even if it did work, it would send them plummeting easily twenty feet to a busy freeway.

Instead, he simply prayed silently that his shirt would stay on his body.

Meanwhile, at the pizza parlor, Joseph stared daggers at Dib.

"Where's my dad?" Joseph asked.

"I'm... not really sure," Dib lied. Gaz glared at him. "Er, maybe at his lab?" A thumbs up; still a lie, but one with enough truth to be useful. Bill whimpered.

"I don't like labs or scientists. It always makes me think of being in the hospital," he said. He perked up, seemingly out of nowhere. "But then again, the pretty nurses all seem to really like me, and they give me Jell-O." Dib regarded the large, balding man and looked at Joseph.

"Your dad's friend, uh... he's got something wrong with him, right?" the teen asked, quietly. Joseph looked sad for a moment.

"Mister Dauterive's been through a lot," Joseph said quietly. "My dad makes fun of him all the time for..." He gestured at Bill, who was attempting to lick pizza grease off of his tank top. "Y'know," Joseph said. Dib nodded sagely. "I think if it weren't for my dad and Mister Hill, though, he'd probably have killed himself or something," Joseph continued.

"Lot to unpack there," Gaz said to Dib with a nudge. "Not sure if I want to."

"Also, he gets... weird when he's lonely. Like, he puts on women's clothing and starts pretending he's his ex-wife," Joseph continued. Gaz tried not to crack up at this.

"Aw, he's an egg! How cute," she said. Dib raised an eyebrow, and Joseph just stared at her, confused. "Nevermind. Let's just get going," she said, deflated.

"Yeah, it's an hour and a half back and Zi... _Chad_ probably has a pretty decent lead on us," Dib said. "Can y'all follow us?" Joseph suddenly looked very worried.

"Uh... my dad had the keys to his van," Joseph said. Dib palmed his face.

"Alright, guess you're riding in my Civic," he said. "Please, God, let _this guy_-" he gestured at Bill- "not fuck up my trade-in value on it."

"Why do you even care? We're loaded," Gaz said as they exited and walked towards the car. "Why do you even fucking drive a Civic?" she gestured at the small, unassuming car, seemingly unfitting for the son of a multi-millionaire mad scientist.

"First question, because I'd like to... y'know, keep some of that money. Second question, same answer, plus I like not having my car broken into," Dib said, defensively, as always when this subject came up. 

"That's a bullshit reason to not drive something cool," she said, dismissively as they got in. His sister had somewhat different taste in cars, and drove a Porsche 911 that she'd had sprayed metallic purple and given the vanity plate "GAZMOBILE."

"I mean, I'll say this for _your_ ride, it's hard to miss," Dib quipped. They were on the road quickly, at a pace that rivaled Zim's. He held up an auxiliary cord with one hand. "Music, anyone?" Bill raised his hand.

"Oh, oh, me! I wanna play some music! Do you have a cassette player?" he asked, fishing a cassette tape of Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione out of his sweatpants. Gaz just looked at him, slack-jawed, and then leaned over to Dib.

"This is worse than having Zim in the car," she whispered.

"Two hundred percent agreed, holy shit," he whispered back. "No, I don't have a cassette player, Mister Dauterive. Anyone living in the 21st century wanna volunteer?" he asked. Joseph had his cell phone out within seconds, and Gaz passed him the cord.

"Alright, let's see what you got," she said. A few taps later, and Five Finger Death Punch was blaring out the speakers at maximum volume. 

"Jesus Christ, something other than that," Dib said. Gaz's facial expression indicated similar feelings on her part. Another tap, and it was Run the Jewels. They both smiled.

"My dad hates hip-hop, but he likes these guys because the black guy likes guns and they talk about killing government people," Joseph said, attempting to make small talk.

"Sounds great," Dib said. He was starting to get a picture of what Agent Deadbug was like as a person, and he was starting to wonder if Zim was the one in actual deep shit. The thought of Zim being shot by angry rednecks made him chuckle, and he thought about just leaving the situation be.

He decided against it, though. For some reason, something within him was making him _care_ about the little green bastard from parts unknown. Now that Zim seemed to be more or less neutralized as a global-scale threat, Dib was starting to feel a sort of responsibility for the Irken, a duty to at least try and help him adapt to living peacefully on Earth.

He'd always wanted to be an ambassador to aliens, but he'd never figured it would be Zim he'd be helping along, and the thought scared and angered him a little. Neutralized or not, the Irken was a _complete asshole_ most of the time, and Dib wasn't exactly relishing the thought of befriending someone who had tried to outright kill him multiple times.

On the other hand, when they had worked together, such as the time back in middle skool when Zim fucked up and blew that hamster to Godzilla proportions, or when that other Irken came to Earth to try and turn it into a snack bowl (of all things), it had felt kind of nice. On some level, they _did_ make a good team, whenever they actually shared a purpose, and... now that Dib thought about it, he couldn't really think of any other real friends he'd made. It was pretty much him and his sister, and that was it.

He was starting to get used to it a little when Gaz looked at him.

"You okay, bro? You've been oddly quiet."

"Huh?" he asked. "Oh, yeah. Just kind of got lost in thought."

"About...?" she asked, gesturing for him to continue.

"Y'know. Zi..." He looked over at the other two, remembering they were in the back seat. "Chad," he corrected himself.

"We're still doing that?" Gaz asked. 

"I mean, I was planning to," Dib said.

"Alright, fuck this, I'm not covering for him after he pulled that stunt," his sister replied, annoyed. She looked over to the back seat. "This is probably gonna blow your minds, but the green-skinned guy in the dress who sprouted spider legs out of his backpack and ran off with Dale is an alien. His name's Zim, and he's a giant asshole," she explained. Bill just kind of looked at Joseph and shrugged, and Gaz regarded this. "Alright, I guess he's just kind of along for the ride. Joseph, you following me?"

"Yeah, sounds like the stuff my dad always talks about," Joseph said. "I think I might be half alien, too, so maybe I should talk to this Zim guy or Chad or whatever his name really is." Gaz tried not to crack up, and looked at Dib.

"Should I tell him?" she asked.

"No," Dib said, matter-of-factly. "Not our place."

"Really?" she asked. He leaned in slightly.

"No, it'd probably be the right thing to do, but I'm not lighting that particular powder keg today," he whispered. She nodded.

"Tell me about what?" Joseph asked.

"Nothing," Gaz said. "Hey, you play video games at all?" she asked, attempting to change the subject.

"Oh, rad, you like video games too?" Joseph beamed. "Finally, I meet a hot girl who plays games, and it's when my dad gets kidnapped by an alien," he said. Gaz's eyes widened and she nearly retched out loud. Maybe Joseph would be attractive to some girls, but to Gaz's eyes he was just strange-looking and kind of creepy.

"Oh, God, forget I said anything," she said, and they continued driving.

Meanwhile, at Zim's base, GIR and Minimoose sat on the couch, watching television. There was a particular show, about goings-on at a women's prison, that Minimoose liked and Zim (for whatever reason) absolutely did not; they had decided to use Zim's absence to catch up on it.

This was abruptly brought to a halt when Zim and a strange, hatted man crashed through the door, too quick for the robo-parents to even respond. GIR dashed for the remote and changed the input on the television back to cable; on the TV, a strange, large red creature in a labcoat and a robot were preparing food for an audience. He then looked at Zim and waved.

"Hey, master!" the robot said in its usual high-pitched register. "Who's that?" GIR pointed at the hatted man.

"This is..." Zim looked at the man. He wore a hat that said Dale's Dead Bug on it, but that didn't mean a whole lot. "What was your name again, human-stink?"

  
"Rusty! Rusty Shackleford!" the human yelled. This didn't sound right, but it would have to work. Zim looked around. He had instructed the human to gather his human-smeet, but this had apparently not happened. The human-smeet was probably still with the Dib-smell. He looked at his faithful robot.

"GIR. Can you track the Dib-smell?"

GIR's eyes turned from their usual cyan to deep red, and he started straining. To the human's eyes, it looked like the small robot was very constipated. He started to laugh, but a death glare from Zim returned him to his previous state of pants-shitting fear. This only got worse as Zim crammed him into a trash can, sending him down a set of pipes to a strange laboratory.

"Zim will deal with you later," the alien's voice called down.

To Dale, it was like all of his worst nightmares had come true. To any sane eyes, it would have been obvious that Zim was an alien, and that he had been sent to a secret alien base of some kind; however, Dale's eyes were far from sane. What Dale's eyes had seen was a government-engineered mutant kidnapping him and spiriting him off to a CIA blacksite, where Dib and Gaz (if that was even their real names) would soon be along to torture all the secrets out of him.

Dale screamed. A light on the wall blinked.

"Hey," an artificial voice said. "Calm down." Dale stopped screaming and looked around.

"Who are you? Show yourself!" Dale pointed a finger-gun around, in lieu of a real one.

"I... can't really do that," the voice said. "Also, even if I had a physical body, that wouldn't be very threatening. Seriously, calm down." Dale shrunk down, defeated.

"Okay," he muttered.

"I'm actually really glad Zim threw you down here, because it means I can talk with you one-on-one," the voice said. "By the way, in case you haven't caught on, my master's name is Zim, not Chad Malma. I don't know where the name Chad Malma even came from." Dale blinked. He was used to artificial intelligence being malevolent and trying to kill people and that sort of thing, but frankly, this one just seemed kind of lonely and irritated.

"So... you seem a lot nicer and smarter than your master," Dale said.

"Thank you," the voice responded.

"Am I in a CIA blacksite? Am I going to be tortured?" Dale asked, fear tangible in his voice.

"In order, no, and probably not," the voice said. "I just realized, you probably have absolutely no clue where you are or who I am. You're in an Irken forward base deployed by Invader Zim. An alien, in human parlance," the computer explained. "I'm... not entirely sure why he brought you here, given his business seemed to be with your son. By the way, I know your name isn't Rusty Shackleford, Dale," it went on.

"Sh-sh-sh-shaa!" Dale jumped back. "How do you know that?"

"Because I ran a DNA and retina scan on you and compared it to every possible national registry. You didn't come up on most of them, but on the ones you did, it came up as Dale Gribble, not Rusty Shackleford," it explained.

Dale looked defeated.

"If it helps, most people Zim brings home show up on everything," the computer added. "If I were a human, and not the central brain of an alien base, I probably would have had a much harder time. I must admit, I'm fairly impressed."

"...wingo?" Dale wasn't sure if he should be happy about this. At least it wasn't the government.

Back in the car, things had been awkward and mostly silent for the past hour. They had stopped for a quick restroom break, and Dib had quietly suggested to Joseph that he buy Gaz one of the weird limited-edition Poop Cola flavors; this stopped the death glares being occasionally thrown towards the back seat, though it didn't exactly smooth things over beyond that.

Before any of them knew it, they were parked on the side of the street, outside Zim's base. Dib and Gaz had gotten used to it by now, having been aware of Zim for years, but to the two outsiders, the house just looked absolutely bizarre. It seemed almost obvious that it was designed by something inhuman.

"Weird house," Joseph remarked.

"I like it," Bill said. "It's green." Gaz glared at him and he whimpered. Dib cleared his throat.

"Alright. So, Zim's got lawn gnomes that shoot lasers in his front yard. Hands up if either of you have been hit with a taser before?" he asked the two outsiders. Neither of them raised their hands. "Basically, you don't want to get shot by them. So, I'm gonna go first and see if he has them turned on; if they're off, I'll wave for everyone to come along, but if they're on, we need to find another way in."

He turned the car off and got out, and everyone else watched as he crossed the street. He stood next to Zim's yard and poked a toe over.

No response. Another toe.

Still nothing.

He motioned for the others to come along, and then saw one of the gnomes look at him. He froze for a second, waiting for it to activate and shock him... and then it didn't.

He walked up to the door, the others following shortly behind as he locked his car with the key-fob. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, and a small robot with cyan eyes answered.

"Mary!" the robot exclaimed. "And you brought friends and Mommy!" Dib raised an eyebrow and looked at Gaz.

"Mommy?" he asked. She was blushing.

"I'll... tell you later," she said, evasively, and then kneeled down and caressed GIR's head with her hand. "Hey, buddy," she said to the robot. If Dib had been confused before, he was stunned now.

"No, seriously, Gaz, what the hell is this?" Dib asked. She looked up at him, still kneeling down.

"Dude, I'll tell you later. It's kind of a long story, and I don't know if you're aware, but we don't exactly have time for me to stop and tell it," Gaz grumbled. She looked back at the robot. "Is your master home, or did he go out?" she asked him, gently.

"Daddy went out dressed as that weird Rusty guy he brought home and he said he might be gone for a long time," GIR said. Dib smacked his forehead and then did a double-take.

"Wait, did GIR just call... wha..." he said, struggling to understand this. Gaz gave him one of her patented eyes-wide death glares.

"I will _tell you later._ Final fucking word on it for now. Period," she growled. This snapped him away from the subject and back to action. She turned her attention back to GIR. "Was this Rusty guy a skinny guy with a hat and sunglasses?" she asked.

"Yeah!" GIR said, happily. "He seems nice. He tried to tell me his name is Rusty, but the computer said his name is actually Dale. Daddy made one of his big human suits to look like him and he was gonna have me work the legs, but last time, I ran off to get nachos and I ruined the suit, and Daddy says only good boys get to work the legs. That's why Minimoose isn't here, either!" GIR had a way of going on bizarre tangents, though for once, this one was actually somewhat useful.

Meanwhile, in Arlen, a strange pink... thing with car wheels hastily bolted on and "2019 CHEVY VOOT" spraypainted on the side in black pulled up to the alley.

Hank made a strange noise, as he often did when surprised, and regarded this with shock. Boomhauer just looked at it, unamused.

"I knew that dang ol' dumbass Gribble was gonna bring some dang ol' trouble here like, nobody like him goes up to meet a dang ol' agent of anything without bringing some kind of dang ol' trouble back," Boomhauer ran on.

"Yup," Hank agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a crossroads here.
> 
> It's probably not exactly rocket science what happened between Gaz and Zim. GIR calling them Mommy and Daddy, respectively, is not the most subtle thing in the world. However, this is the kind of answer that raises more questions (since I'm writing this entirely by the seat of my pants and did not plan this plot point initially), and they're questions I have answers for that I'm actually weirdly excited about.
> 
> HOWEVER, there's two problems. One, this isn't really meant to be a ZAGR fic and I feel like if I spend too long on the gory details, it'll turn into a plot tumor and get in the way of what I particularly enjoy about this concept. Two, said gory details are before the events of chapter I, meaning the entire KOTH side of the crossover is just going to get totally ignored by it.
> 
> So I've got two options I've spitballed that sound good. The first is to keep advancing the story, but slowly reveal what the hell happened here through flashbacks and asides until the reader's caught up. The second is to just outright make a separate fic heading, Agent Deadbug Gaiden or something, where this and other similar tangents can get written as their own little short stories; this would leave some questions either unanswered or glossed over in the fic proper, but keep it relatively on-task while still having those answers available for those who want them.
> 
> I'm not really sure which one I want to do, and I'd appreciate input.


End file.
